Minutes of the July 16, 2012 MeetingSmoky Mountain AMS Chapter

Everyone met first for dinner at Calhoun’s on the River near the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville. Afterwards, the meeting commenced on the UT Ag campus in the Biosystems Engineering and Environmental Sciences building. Robert Blevins (retired from the U.S. Air Force and currently a consultant with the military and U.S. Army Corp of Engineers) spoke on "Worldwide weather monitoring and assessment for the intelligence community (past, present, and future)". His talk was a brief history of weather support to the Intelligence Community, including current capabilities and areas of needed improvement. Part of his briefing was a GIS-based demonstration of the day-to-day weather analysis and weather modeling that he accomplished.

Biography for Robert Blevins: Mr. Blevins received degrees in meteorology from the Penn State University (Bachelors of Science, 1976) and from the North Carolina State University (Master of Science, 1985). He served in the Air Force for twenty years, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1996. While in the military, Mr. Blevins served in several positions including Director of Weather for all military in Japan, the Chief of Software Development at the Air Force Climate Center. He also held various staff and forecasting positions during his career. During his military career, Robert was also assigned to the Intelligence Community, where he established and led a weather team to provide climatological, analytical, and forecast support worldwide. Since retirement, Robert has consulted to the Intelligence Community to monitor, assess, and advise on weather conditions worldwide. Principle weather support is for crops and water issues as well as an assessment and forecast for hazardous weather conditions. Much of the work relies on integrating daily and seasonal weather with climate data and then using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to analyze and model weather conditions worldwide. Robert collaborates with the military and the US Army Corp of Engineers to operate GIS based snow models and flood potential models (and soon river flow models) for interest regions worldwide.